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Ambiguity is the intrigue in "The Two Faces of January," the new thriller starring Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst and Oscar Isaac. Acclaimed writer Hossein Amini, making his feature directing debut, sets it up beautifully on a sun-washed day in Athens, Greece, in the early 1960s. Rydal (Isaac), a snappy, self-assured tour guide, is leading a handful of very attentive young beauties along the ancient stone steps of the Acropolis. At a distance a perfectly polished affluent American couple, Chester (Mortensen) and Colette (Dunst), are posing playfully for each other, all smiles. Both the couple and the tour guide deserve a second look. Their eyes lock, and though the moment seems...

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Ambiguity is the intrigue in "The Two Faces of January," the new thriller starring Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst and Oscar Isaac.
Acclaimed writer Hossein Amini, making his feature directing debut, sets it up beautifully on a sun-washed day in...

Lars von Trier is in many ways the central casting version of an international art house filmmaker. Or maybe a "Saturday Night Live" parody played straight. Often giving himself the role of the provocateur, Von Trier makes films that dare to...

NEW YORK — When actor Willem Dafoe arrived on the Swedish set of Lars von Trier's "Manderlay" a number of years back, the filmmaker asked if they might meet to discuss Dafoe's role.
It was far from a typical meeting.
Von Trier first asked if...

"Inside Llewyn Davis," Joel and Ethan Coen's study of a struggling New York folk singer in 1961, was the big winner Saturday at the National Society of Film Critics. The film received four awards, including best film, actor for Oscar Isaac,...

When Los Angeles Opera presented its new production of Richard Wagner's "Siegfried" a few years ago at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the packed house included the usual assortment of donors and local opera buffs. Nestled somewhere in the...

A new production of Richard Wagner's opera "Tannhauser" in Germany was reportedly booed by members of the audience who were apparently upset over the use of Nazi imagery in the staging. The opera opened Saturday at the Deutsche Oper am...

Richard Wagner -- the 19th century composer whose epic operas are considered to be among the greatest ever written and whose anti-Semitic views still cause controversy -- was born 200 years ago Wednesday in Leipzig, Germany.
The composer's bicentennial...

Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier understands the art and craft of making movies, the power the form is capable of combined with the skill and means to achieve it, about as well as anyone working in the world today.
He also seems to believe in cinema as an...

Mark Roybal, president of production at Indian Paintbrush, still remembers the rush he got from viewing "Little Miss Sunshine" at its 2006 Sundance Film Festival screening.
"It was one of the most unbelievable experiences I've ever...

— Writer-director Terrence Malick wasn't there to accept it, but "The Tree of Life," his ambitious and long-anticipated examination of what it all means, won the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or on Sunday night.
"He remains infamously and...

As Justine, the complicated young bride at the center of Lars von Trier's apocalyptic meditation on depression, "Melancholia," Kirsten Dunst is called upon to convey great depths of anguish with very little dialogue. But Dunst, 29, delivers such...

In space, no one can hear you scream — but everyone can hear the classical music loud and clear.Science-fiction movies have had a long affinity for classical music, and the relationship is a fascinating and complex one. In...

In Lars von Trier’s upcoming apocalyptic meditation “Melancholia,” Kirsten Dunst plays Justine, a young bride grappling with an overwhelming depression that seems linked to the appearance of a mysterious planet -- one that just might be on a cosmic path toward

In two recent films -- David Cronenberg's "A Dangerous Method" and Lars von Trier's "Melancholia" -- Richard Wagner's music pervades the soundtrack as well as the story lines, informing the psychology of the characters while adding crucial sonic subtext.

The National Society of Film Critics, which is made up of 58 the country's major film critics, rarely agrees with the picks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. And the group likely stayed true to form with their picks for 46th annual awards, c